Johan Beetz

Johan Beetz (1874–1949), a Belgium aristocrat, physician, surgeon, naturalist, painter, illustrator and businessmen, settled in Piastre Baie (Baie-Johan-Beetz) in 1897, on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in the Côte-Nord region, Minganie RCM, in Quebec, Canada.

His father Johannes Beetz died when he was two years old and his mother Céline Verzyl (or Versyl) remarried an English major named Walter Turner.

Within this year, Beetz meet Henry de Puyjalon, a pioneer in Canadian ecology who was among the first to suggest wildlife conservation areas.

Beetz notes that the silver fox's dark pigmentation appears because of the climate it lives in, its diet and the water it consumes.

In 1931 he founded a zoo in Charlesbourg (today part of Quebec City), later known by the name Jardin zoologique de Québec (it closed in 2006).

When the business was badly affected by the 1929 stock market crash, he was named director of the fox furring department at the Service de l'élevage des animaux à fourrure of the Quebec government.

There is also a lake, Lac Beetz, in the Lac-Jérôme unorganized territory, which may be named for him, although the Commission de toponymie du Québec does not attest this.